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Shift puts Specter consultants in a jam

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Specter's campaign team faces some nettlesome decisions about whether to keep working for a longtime client.
AP Photo

Mottola, who did not return a telephone message, has represented a host of moderate Republicans, ranging from former Sens. Gordon Smith of Oregon and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island to former New York Gov. George Pataki and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

But he’s also worked for more conservative Republicans, including former President George W. Bush.

“You have to look at the totality of your client list and how does this impact them. You’re not going to just look at one specific race,” said Republican media consultant John Brabender, who worked with Mottola on Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign. “I can’t speak for Chris, but I know that it oftentimes creates difficulty, because a lot of us still do work for the RNC and so forth. And [Specter’s switch] is so high-profile that it’s not one of those ones where you can just be quiet for a while and it will go away. People will know. It’s a tough decision, but sometimes the only decision is that you can’t work for the candidate.”

Brabender conceded that the decision is complicated by Specter’s bulging war chest and the likelihood that his reelection bid will be among the biggest spending campaigns of the 2010 midterm election.

“It’s not the best economic time, so some decisions that may have been black and white in this case may not be as easy as black and white,” he said.

The loss of Specter’s campaign payments would be an even tougher blow to the Harrisburg-based Eagle Consulting Group — which is owned by Specter campaign manager Nicholas — than it would be for a bigger national firm.

Calls to Eagle on Tuesday and Wednesday were answered by a receptionist who said “Citizens for Arlen Specter,” but Nicholas declined to answer questions about whether he was sticking with Specter.

The firm’s website lists GOP clients including the state Republican Party in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Ohio, as well as the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The NRCC has not paid Eagle since 2002, according to the NRCC, and an NRCC adviser said “we have no plans to use them in the future.”

If GOP consultants abandoned Specter, he’d have no trouble finding Democrats to replace them, asserted Ed Mitchell, a Pennsylvania-based Democratic media consultant who counts Reps. John Murtha and Paul Kanjorski among his clients.

“I’d go to work for him in a minute if he called me,” said Mitchell, who conceded that he doesn’t see eye to eye with Specter on every issue. “But I don’t agree with everything any of my clients stand for.”

There is no jam. Look behind the scenes you see the same group of special interests and lobbyists on both sides. The banks minted one coin with two sides, Dem and Rep. But, they are still two sides of the exact same coin being pushed off on the people. Nothing has changed one iota until we start to throw out all the leaches in Washington.